I don't believe demons or Satan can put thoughts into our heads. They can manipulate the circumstances and environment that people find themselves in, but people are always free to choose what they will do. Satan knows the weaknesses of everyone and will *work* on those in as many ways and forms as he can.

Warning- If the quotes are not removed I can pretty much predict that either they or the post will be removed by the moderator.


You betcha...

Done... and done... and done! - TW

Honestly though, Gail, I was under the impression that the two first threads, which are now locked, were the place to share what is called "orignal thoughts" but now I see that this whole section is only interested in "original thoughts."

sorry I will remove my posts then if i can, the ones I can.

sky

No problem, sky! It took us a couple tries to get it right, too!

Oh okay, thanks Gail. Somehow that makes feel better! hehe :)

sky,

I took care of it for you.

If there is a Bible text or passage from a favorite author, give us the reference or summarize the thought of it briefly in your own words to make your own point.

I have actually found the exercise of paraphrasing a quote in my own words actually helps me understand it better. It tends to force me to actually think the idea through more carefully in order to express the idea in other words.

OK


Tom

As moderator

I think what sounds looney is the consideration that other beings are doing this whispering thing without any evidence that it would be other beings.

I think we can recognize that we have a subconscious that filters a lot of sensory input and summarizes it for our conscious mind. The weakness of the conscious mind is that it can only pay attention to one thing at a time, while the subconscious processes things in parallel.

There is an interesting physical model of the universe that is being explored that sees the world as being holographic in nature. The unique property of a hologram is that it can be sliced in half and you still have the whole hologram. If this is true of reality then all the information that makes up reality is redundantly available locally for the conscious mind to access.

We simply can't process all that information at the same time, so the conscious mind passes this through our perception in a linear fashion so that we experience life as if time is passing.

One of the goals of many types of meditation is not to check out, but to find a state where the chatter of fear stops and we can have our whole attention available to listen more closely and thereby become more conscious. This idea that the devil is just around every corner waiting to enter into our minds is simply another fear that can become a major distraction for some people.

There are a number of studies of people who master their art and professions. The thing they generally have in common is the ability to focus all their attention on their art.

When we study what it means to be loved the idea of attention is very important. The two things that define love for most people is being seen and being heard. If one is engaged in the fear based focus on Satan being on the prowl the ability to love is severely hampered and the focus is on oneself.

This is why any belief system that focuses on fears tends to be self centered and reduces a person's ability to love and empathize. Fear also tends to keep a person immature.

In community, when people can really hear and see each other deep bonds form and life feels like it is meaningful. This provides the foundation for joy our most sublime experience. Fear destroys all of this and most times fear is based on illusions.

So if there is a Satan I would say it is simply fear.

That sort of confirms the framing of the great cosmic battle of God vs. Satan if God = love and perfect love casting out fear. In the end love wins. Fear loses the battle for the hearts and minds of the people. What's that song that really was inadvertently a deep spiritual/ philosophical truth - The Power of Love...

I was thinking along those lines as well.

I think humans are afraid of the unknown so we tend to anthropomorphize these powerful influences on our experience.

In a way we project ourselves onto our gods so we can make the unknown more predictable. I think that is why god looks so much like an iron age ruler in the Bible because the Bible writers are projecting humanity onto their god.

I think Carl Jung describes this well as our tendency to draw on archetypes to help explain the great collective consciousness. Joseph Campbell does a great job of tracing these archetypes among different religions and traditions in his books on mythology.